@contradevian
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Posts posted by @contradevian
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One thing I though was that UKAR be forced to offer tenants of its mortgaged properties the Right To Buy, perhaps if their landlord was in default of his mortgages.
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Housing benefit is winning!!!
Thats good news at least. Voted for cut in tax credits and housing benefit
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The DM are asking people to vote on what benefits should be cut.
My guess is that they won't vote for pensions or housing benefit to be cut!
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Of course people will do what is rational. At any social class. Nobody disputes that. That is irrelevant, not some sort of argument killer. Underpaid - people are paid what their labour commands in a free market, no more no less, except when the state distorts things with minimum wages and the like.
Tax credits aren't the result of being 'underpaid', what rot. Tax credits are the result of a numpty in government - lets call this hypothetical numpty Gordon Brown - deciding to use the awesome power of the state to redistribute income in a **** eyed and manifestly unfair manner.
Come off it. If P/t London dog walkers can earn £30K a year, a hell of a lot of people slaving a way in a shit office 40 hours a week must be underpaid or not really doing anything productive. Divide the firm's turnover by head count.
IIRC the idea behind tax credits was to give firms a cheap/cheaper work force, as it would be far easier to just tax the firms. Except they never really taxed the firms! Even let some firms like Vodafone off. We even have firms earning billions out of the UK that don't pay any corporation tax at all.
You'd have to follow the money really and see who was really lobbying for tax credits at the time. I doubt the 'one eyed loon' was wholly responsible. Indeed its yet another idea borrowed from the USA. I strongly suspect the Labour government wasn't swayed by the massed and powerful lobby of single mums!
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Personally speaking, I've got issues with the tax credit system. However, I am neither envious nor jealous of the net beneficiaries and don't blame them for acting rationally when being offered incentives to behave in a certain way.
I do have negative feelings towards the creatures who created those incentives and how those incentives are funded. But those feelings aren't of envy or jealousy either.
We've had this discussion before countless times, due to numerous threads started by the wonderful wonderpup.
The lower orders are expected to act morally (usually requiring a huge great stick to make them work) whilst the higher orders are expected to act in their own interests (and need only have a juicy big carrot dangled in front of them). ie Greed is good!
I'm a bit pee'd off with the tax credit situation myself and wasn't aware it was giving incomes as high as £40k a year. However if you can 'earn' that amount by just knocking out a few sprog's it hints at something else I've suspected for a very long time... you are being massively underpaid in the jobs you do.
I find it incredible now that 15 years ago I walked into a job that paid £25k a year which grew into nearer £50k a year with various `benefits` etc, but now if I were to go back into the job market, I'd still struggle to get the £25k a year, during which time house prices etc have trebled! I don't think single mum's on tax credits are the cause of the compression or 'squeezed middle' by any means. They are being made one of the scapegoats however.
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I hate driving so I am looking forward to not having to do it
.Me too. I think its great. Last time I drove the fours or so down the M1, I thought why can't a computer do this?
Also Google cars, will make it a lot safer for low powered transport users such as cyclists.
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This ^. In almost all the discussions, the blame is put on the mother, claiming all these benefits. How about the father pays more or has money taken from his benefits to pay for his children, rather than other taxpayers having to do it? And perhaps they should start counting maintenance payments from a partner as income (and reduce benefits) because at the moment they do not affect benefit payments which is ridiculous.
I think 'tax credit envy' is up there with 'social housing envy' on HPC!
Cos people with both caused the financial crisis of course, as the demand for 'spare bedrooms' crashed the economy.
When will people work out they are being played?
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Interesting the frustration and resentment voiced by those on that thread against those who've taken advantage of the TC bonanza. The Tories do seem to be reading it correctly.
Like a lot of things I missed out on the great tax credit bonanza. Its clearly ridiculous someone should earn £40K a year 'doing a few hours at Tesco' and having a few kids, but I think they are masking a more deep seated problem. A distinct lack of secure well paid FULL TIME work.
And also the fact that you have got single mums off their bottoms and actually doing some hours is perhaps a result, but if we still had the mill/factory work of the earlier part of the 20th century I doubt a lot of this would have been needed.
And also of course once again. To have kids you need a father, and where are they?
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Tories have been peddling this myth for 230 years. Poor Laws were blamed for making the poor feckless with a tendency to breed. In reality they were poor because they had been kicked off the land by the propertied class who voted, and operated the legal system in their favour.
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Tend to agree with RK that this is all a transfer payment and ends up being spent in the economy.
So if you spent all your tax credits on booze, fags and petrol most would end up with the government!
Will be interesting to see what happens to aggregate demand when all this gets cut and everyone is scrabbling for the few full time jobs left.
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Her partner also earns £400+ but isnt down as living there.Those amounts arent common but £300+ amounts are.A small business owner i know owns a hairdresser's.She has 5 staff,She pays them around £25k a year for all five.They get benefits between them of £80k+ a year.(all on tax credits).
2 of those staff were full time but dropped to 16 hours for tax credit reasons.The amounts involved are incredible.Right and left should support huge reform,for different reasons.
Sure but would you want to remain in the NE once all this ends? This tax credit nonsense has basically kept the region going.
Lets face it, all this came about after all the great (State) industries were sold off or collapsed, and nothing has come into replace what was stable, well paying employment.
Ho moanerz got bribed with rent capture on their properties so have continued to feel wealthier. The rest got tax credits.
I'm all for clamping down on this and that 'scam' but there have to be alternatives in place and I can't see mass full time employment making a come back anytime soon.
This is still the economics of the Monopoly board. 'Ooh look at me I own all the properties and have hotels on Park Lane etc,, now I want the rent , scroungers'
Its ridiculous. Where are you supposed to get it from?
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Singaporeans buying in London. Meanwhile in Singapore 80% of housing was originally publicly owned
http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/03/how-singapore-fixed-its-affordable-housing-problem/388451/
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Interesting the debate has moved to where we pretty much said it would move on here years ago.Only thirty minutes ago i was talking to someone i know who has 5 children and works 16 hours.She gets around £560 a week in benefits.The left should never of let Brown go as crazy as he did with tax credits because it was obvious where it would go.Employers DO hold down wages because of tax credits and their workers DO refuse promotion/more hours due to them.
Because of the insane amounts handed out it was certain that a Conservative government would slash them because hardly anyone not getting them supports them.In fact there is an almost fury among people who dont get them but see the amounts others get.
The left should of seen this but they didnt.Labour MPs now saying its terrible etc just look way out of touch.
We might not get the full details until the autumn statement though as id expect the cuts to be staged to take the sting out.Notice also no mention of Universal Credit.If they cut tax credits they also need to cut the UC child elements by the same,if it was ever coming in of course.
Good grief!
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The answer is not more Socialism. The answer is more Capitalism and free markets.
Banbankbailouts
Letmktsetrates
banHTB
etc
Its the 'free market' and foreign capital that seems to be buying up the houses though!
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Alot of people i see on facebook are doing or are wanting a 16hr job to access the tax credits.
It's endemic and out of control i've just seen the news 4.5m families are on low pay topped up with tax credits.
Word spreads like wildfire and the formula is passed on from claimer to would be claimer.
I'd like to see the month on month tax credit uptake figures i would wager they show a month on month increase in new claimants.
I'd say at tge root of it is the government are actually concerned at the numbers realising the tax credit route is better for them and are going to attempt to make it less attractive to keep people working full time and supporting themselves.
Fair enough. So I assume there is a now a huge pool of unfilled 30+ hour vacancies. Employers are crying out for staff but no one is interested because of the 16 hour 'tax credit scam.'
I'm sure you are right but sure this was because employers wanted flexibility and a 'just in time' workforce. In fact I'm fairly sure supermarkets used to promote this workstyle. 'Work for us, and still be able to fit in the kids' and so on...
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Perhaps he is attacking the 16hr scam that a lot of people on wtc do (work minimum hours to maximise their income via benefits and salary). I know quite a few people who do this and they probably take home more or less the same as someone working full time on a £40-£50k wage (after tax). The whole thing is a big mess. Not sure how it will work out but it does need cutting reducing.
Not convinced thats a scam. Round these parts 16 hours is what you do as full time work just isn't available!
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It's pretty incredible that all these things that we have been talking about for years are finally being discussed in the echelons of power and being printed in national newspapers. For example, the emperor's new clothes that tax credits are subsidies to big business is something that David Cameron is vocalising. Halle-******ing-luljah! About time socialism for the rich (tax credits and housing benefits) were acknowledged for what they are. And about time that companies like Tesco are told to pay their own way. Lets just hope that the next subsidy for the rich (BTL tax breaks, housing benefit) is next under the microscope.
Sometimes I wonder if the politicos read forums like HPC for ideas. So many intelligent and informed people on here. Wouldn't surprise me at all.
That isn't quite Cameron is saying. He seems to be saying if you are low paid its your fault because you prefer to be a benefits junkie. Higher wages are not likely to follow and Tesco suddenly having to pay proper wages again with their financial situation? Hmm should be interesting.
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Well if he cuts WTC then all the marginal self employed tax credit funded business's will just march back into the Jobcentre's I'd have thought. Indeed they might be marginally be better off.
Will show Cameron and Osborne's recovery to be a sham at the very least, as the Jobless figures mount
Removing tax credits won't create more jobs or force wages up. Exact opposite I'd have thought
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Applications per job is back at normal levels, 3 applications per job apparently on average.
There's work out there; that is not the issue. The issue is if you can actually subsist on it, with all the leeches affixed to the economic veins of the country.
Exactly. The only reason Cameron and his ilk want you our working every hour of the day, till you are 70 or drop, is so he and his ilk can charge you more rent, and ensure you pay over the odd's for a house.
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Well here it is from the horses mouth
Dave C will end the tax credit merry-go-round.
Can't see the minimum wage being increased to the £10hr+ req to follow through with it though just mass unemployment as companies ditch workers.
http://news.sky.com/story/1506165/pm-tax-credits-merry-go-round-must-end
The Prime Minister said the welfare system must help people to get good jobs instead of giving them handouts signalling an attack on the tax credit pay-outs that top up low wages for the working poor and housing benefit.
But he said the Government would balance benefit cuts with boosts to the minimum wage and personal tax allowance, as well as providing further childcare support for working families and improvements to education.
Being unemployed and single i would actually be quite happy with a hike in min wage as i would be competing on a level playing field against the big tax credit claim type recipients.
Assuming the higher paying jobs exist of course.
Bearing in mind local firms here, are stuffed with foreign (EU etc) grads on NMW.
Round here the jobs don't really exist unless you get in at the local NHS trust, the Council, or the local 'Edububble' the University. Otherwise its a precarious existence, of warehouse work, 'care' telesales, etc
I know people well into 30's that have never known a permanent job, some even have 'a degree.'
The 'jobs for life' at 'the ICI' and David Brown's vanished a long time ago.
On the other hand property prices are relatively cheap and the countryside is quite nice.
Good luck!
Buy in West Yorkshire, before Osborne spreads his London rentier gravytrain further North with his 'Northern Shithouse' project.
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Well you are right, but like all markets for every winner there is a looser, and with property the body count is stacking up.
I think it will get a lot worse before it gets better.
At the moment the stage on the monopoly board has been reached where the players generally still have some property and have managed to even accumulate a house or two.
Once all hope is lost, and every roll of the dice results in just another rent demand, is when things will kick off however
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23 million people, just shy of the land mass of Europe with 600 million people and with no real geographical barrier to building...it might be desert but t's flat unlike Japan.
Also they are rather good at keeping the population in check having no qualms about setting up off shore concentration camps for illegals. So its all about Anglo Saxon enthusiasm for property and not a lot else.
Reading my Twitter feed, growing realisation that Boomers have stolen the gains of the commodities boom in the form of a red hot housing market. Could get quite nasty.
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It's a pretend-scarce resource because land is the ultimate power play and always has been. I don't have a particular problem with the bedroom tax in principle, except where there's no fewer-bedroom alternative in practice. Although it shouldn't even be necessary to have such policies to begin with.
At least most understand the Conservatives are rentiers so I assume everyone knows to expect more of the same. Labour are worse; the mansion tax was probably their (and libdem) only decent proposal because it impacts unearned gains and was popular despite wailing mainstream headlines. Perhaps, optimistically, because a growing number are starting to feel something about the system doesn't add up in terms of taxing the productive vs unproductive. Instead they're now out with references to spiteful and toxic. i.e. as full of sh!t as ever.
Well the problem is the unproductive now outnumber the productive as every home owner is now a rent seeker (and a highly leveraged one at that) with each house capturing economic output, whether its let out or not. And by majority, bear in mind most houses now are out earning their owners.
People like this 'free wealth' even if its doing them out of future work and prospects. Not many have started to join the dots yet of where this 'free wealth' is coming from. Like the Lotto its a competition, and largely being stolen from the landless.
Pretty soon the majority of the electorate are unlikely to tolerate this situation, so we can expect the situation to get much worse in the short term, as everything but the kitchen sink is thrown at the property market and the rentiers.
We will see a rise in so called 'Libertarianism' but this is the usually fakery, just rentiers trying to lock in their ill gotten gains.
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They generally have paid/are paying. You're confusing who's paying with who's benefitting. It makes no difference to someone in net receipt of housing welfare whether rents are £1000 or £1, so instead of berating some tenants benefitting over others perhaps you should instead ask why it's so expensive in the first place and follow the money.
When marginal tax rates derived from earned income are zero and we don't have an economic system centred on subsidising unearned rent-seeking and Government's mates then I'll have time for this race to the bottom perspective on social 'benefits'.
I really don't understand why housing has to be a scarce resource. Not exactly ingots of gold or plutonium is it? Even the 'bedroom tax' was farcical in a way. If all people 'aspire' to is a spare bedroom which is basically some 2x2 and plaster board.
Yet to the rentier Tories it has to be that way. Where something can be in abundance, artificial scarcity has to be created, and rents charged. Its what makes your proud to be British I suppose.
And yet we have hereditary rentiers allowed to have spare estates let alone rooms, their families stole vast acreages of commons land through several generations. The thieving isn't insignificant either amounting to something like 61% of UK landmass, acreages never really paid for at all, and we bung subsidies at them as they now regard themselves 'stewards of the countryside'
Tories talk about 'aspiration' but the bulk of the land will be in the perpetual hands of the few. Some land near has been in same hands since Magna Carta. Yeh very aspirational and dynamic. What a joke!
The Crown Estate, Which Runs The Queen's Land And Property Empire, Posts Record Profits Of £285.1 Million
in House prices and the economy
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Rentiers making money in a Rentier Paradise. Honestly you couldn't make it up.
Its a blooming miracle anyone else can!
UK highest rents in Europe.
http://www.citymetric.com/politics/these-maps-show-britain-now-has-highest-rents-europe-1172
and thats even when you strip out the poor countries